Blue cotton candy
by Frozzy.Light
Summary: Antonio is Lovino's stepfather, who is only 5 years old. Lovino's mother diead a year ago, and even since, Antonio has had problems understanding the kid's feelings.


_Thunders, lightning; soft sobs and whimpers._

Antonio opened his eyes immediately and sat up, taking a minute to come back to the real world from Morpheus's arms.

"¿Lovi?"

He waited –pointlessly- for an answer. The room was dark, only being lit for a moment whenever lightning struck, somewhere in the distance. When it did, all the objects in the room acquired a phantasmagoric air. The storm outside seemed to be strong, judging by the constant noise of insistent water hitting on the window. The kid was surely scared…

Sighing, he got off the bed and dragged his feet out of the room, to the contiguous one.

In there, on his bed was a kid, sleeping restlessly.

The kid seemed to be around 5-6 years old. His sleeping clothes were all wrinkled then that he had spent God knew how long moving around the bed. His auburn hair was a mess, not only for the same reason the clothes had wrinkles, but also because of the sweat on his forehead, which only made it worse. Obviously, he was having a nightmare.

"Lovi," Antonio said again, in a soft voice. He went to sit on the bed's edge and shook the boy's shoulder, trying to get him to wake up. "Lovi, everything's fine. Wake up."

With a weak sob, the kid opened his eyes and stared at him, looking a bit scared for a minute until he recognized the man sitting by his side. Then, with a light huff –and a reddish colour on his cheeks-, he closed his eyes again and turned his back to the man, whose lips curved up into a weak smile. It was always that way.

Antonio Fernández Carriedo was Lovino Vargas' stepfather.

Lovino's mother was dead.

The man and the kid's mother, a beautiful Italian, had been good friends since the day she had travelled to Spain, where the man was from, because of a job offer; there had even been a time in which they had dated. However, the woman ended it the day she told him she wasn't really in love with him; that she could only see him as a friend. Antonio had done nothing else than to smile and nod, agreeing to be only friends. Since then, he hadn't really loved anyone else. Time went by and he kept his feelings hidden from her, as she moved on and got with someone else, Lovino's father. When the kid was born, the man she was with abandoned her, and she went running to her friend's arms. They were back together. Antonio's happiness was immense. He was with the woman of his dreams, and the child was the cutest creature he had ever seen. Life was perfect… until the day Lovino turned 4.

It had been a madman's fault, who had shot her while he tried robbing her. No one had been around when that happened. By the time anyone called an ambulance, she had already passed away…

He had accepted to take care of the kid. After having spent four years with him before the accident, he had grown too attached and he couldn't just refuse the custody and let someone else take care of the child, even if he had never married the child's mother. No matter that they weren't related, the bond was too strong… And it was all he had left from that woman. She had wanted to raise him and watch him turn into an excellent person and Antonio would make that happen in her memory, so she could still see it. Who knew, maybe there was a Heaven and she was watching them from above there.

"Bastard," the kid's voice woke him up. The man looked at him for a minute, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He thought he should be used by then, to have the kid call him that and other colorful things. "I'm hungry, dammit. Make me breakfast."

"Just give me a minute to wake up, Lovi." Lazily, he sat up and yawned loudly. He hadn't been able to sleep much after having spent half the night watching the kid in his sleep, making sure he didn't have any other nightmares.

The small Italian huffed and frowned at him, annoyed. "No. Why didn't you wake up earlier? It's late already, idiot!"

A quick glance to the clock was enough to prove the kid right. "A-ay, ¡lo siento!" He jumped out from the bed and ran around the room as he got changed. Dammit. It was a school day and he had to drop Lovino in the kindergarten so he could go to work. Why didn't he ever hear the alarm?

The expression on the kid's face was a bored one as his green eyes followed the man around the room. It was practically screaming that that was everyday's show, and Antonio wouldn't blame him for that. It _was_ everyday's show.

"Lo siento, Lovi, en verdad…" He picked the kid up and kissed his cheeks multiple times, apologetically. Lovino flailed in his grasp and tried to push him away.

"C-cut it out! Go make breakfast already and stop fooling around, bastard!"

The drive to the school was silent, just as breakfast was silent, just as lunch was normally silent, just as dinner was always silent… Lovino and Antonio didn't talk much. Antonio was usually cheerful, extrovert, always wearing a smile to face every problem in life, and he was the kind of person that wouldn't shut up for anything. Lovino was the opposite. Antonio didn't even remember seeing the kid smile whole-heartedly at him, not even once.

Sitting at his desk at work, he sighed while he thought on that. They had never talked about Lovino's mother's death. It had been a year already. Whenever he tried bringing the topic into a conversation, the child frowned at him and started insulting him or ordered him to do something else. Sometimes, he wished he had the ability to 'read' people or to understand feelings completely. Then, just maybe, he would understand why Lovino was so mean to kids his age and… well, to everyone else. He had never hugged him or kissed him; he tried keeping as much space between him and the Spaniard as he could.

It was killing him. The only thing he had promised to his love's memory, and… he was failing horribly at it. Who was he going to fool? Lovino hated him.

That day, after he picked the kid from kindergarten, nothing changed.

The week passed by rather quickly. The hours had been painfully slow, but when he opened his eyes to find it was Saturday, Antonio wondered what had he done with the last five days. Lovino had spent the whole day locked in his room, only coming out for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When Antonio went to sleep that night, he pried, in a trembling voice, asking to no one in particular what he was doing wrong. 'Tomorrow is Sunday,' he thought, trying to fall asleep. 'Tomorrow will be better…'

On Sundays, he used to take the kid to the park. As any other child, he enjoyed it, although he didn't talk to others. Well, he couldn't ask for everything, could he? At least, he was happy seeing the small one enjoy plainly while he went down the slide, or while he was on the swings. At every other moment, the kid showed him he was a small adult, the serious kind, but whenever they were in a park, he was reminded once more that he was dealing with a kid, and, holding onto that thought, he tried to catch every expression on the kid's face.

"Oi, bastard!" The small Italian called out to him, and he stood up from the bench he had been sitting on to walk to his side, embarrassed, receiving a disapproval look from the women in the park because of Lovino's mouth.

"¿Sí, Lovi?"

"I want that."

Lovino was pointing to a stand which sold cotton candy and other sweets. Specifically, what he wanted was cotton candy.

"Ah, sure! Come on," he took the kid's hand gently and walked with him to the stand. "Pick any you want."

It seemed to be a hard task, or that was what Lovino made it look like. The sizes weren't all the same, and he couldn't decide between the smallest one or the biggest one… or something in between?

Meanwhile, another kid walked up to the stand with her mother and picked one out randomly. The mother paid for it, smiling at her daughter, then walked away from the stand.

Antonio contemplated the scene with a simple smile and was going to cheer up Lovino to pick any, but when he looked at the boy, his smile faded. His little body had tensed up, his hands had closed into fists, and he was biting his bottom lip rather harshly. It looked as if he was about to cry, but fought with all his will against it.

"Lovi, what's wrong?"

"I want that one."

With a sigh, Antonio directed his emerald eyes to the cotton candy the kid was pointing at. It was the only cotton candy from the bunch that was colored in blue.

"Alright, that one, then," he took it and paid to the stand's owner before he walked to a bench with the kid, handing him the sweet once he had sat down.

Lovino unwrapped it, dropping the plastic bag that covered it on the Spaniard's lap, and started eating it happily, ripping off small pieces.

Antonio watched, curious and content. Whenever the kid glanced at him, he grinned at him, and pouted lightly when his focus was back on the cotton candy. So, he directed his own focus to the park again.

All kids were laughing, having a good time, playing along with others. Most of the people that accompanied them were only women, and occasionally a woman and a man. The kids looked so happy, so full of that adrenaline of going down the slide, of the emotion of playing with the sand and see if they could find a buried object in there. The mothers were all proud, on alert, smiling. He imagined Lovino's mother in the same situation. Pretty, angelical, glorious…

"Why is it blue?"

The question came from nowhere, catching the Spaniard off guard. "¿Eh?"

"The cotton candy, stupid," the kid puffed his cheeks at him, irritated. To the elder's eyes, it was cute. "Why is it blue if every other cotton candy is pink?"

"Ah, well, you see…" Colorants, was the answer, pink and blue colorants. He knew it, of course he did, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. Why? Because there was something else behind that question. He wouldn't put his finger on it, but the kid's eyes told him so. His gaze was expectant, but not for that answer. However, that wasn't the first thing his mind caught. He always tried making up stories for the kid. Lovino seemed to like things related to magic, fairy tales, things that came from the universe of dreams.

"Pink cotton candies have that color because…" His eyes set on the stand, to observe the man who owned it, then moved to the woman who had bought a pink cotton candy for her daughter before them. "Because humans make them. If you know where to look, you'll see stands with pink cotton candy everywhere. The people who make them add their feelings to them, you know, like love? You always paint that with red…" The kid puffed his cheeks, looking puzzled at him. "Since there's human love in those cotton candies, they are pink."

"Yeah, yeah," Lovino sighed, looking down. "But what about the blue ones?"

"The blue ones are made by…" He thought on Lovino's mother. That was human love too, but he couldn't say that to the kid. How would her mother make a cotton candy for him if she wasn't around anymore? "angels."

Big green eyes looked up at him, now filled with curiosity. Antonio smiled softly and continued, "Angels make them, taking little pieces of sky and putting them into each cotton candy. Angels live in Heaven, right up there," he pointed up at the blue sky, as he looked up at it. "From there, they watch everyone. The good, the bad, and the people they loved and love… because humans can turn into angels when they go away. You can't see them, but they can see you." When he glanced down at the kid, he was looking up at the sky too, his eyes a bit glassy. "In Heaven they have everything they can reach, but not everything they want. That's why they make those cotton candies, so they can show their emotions to a loved one; tell them they're still around…"

For the next minutes, Lovino focused on finishing his sweet. He offered some to the Spaniard, who took a piece, surprised. No word was said. The kid didn't seem to be up for talking. He seemed very thoughtful at the moment.

Antonio wanted to ask, know what was going through his complex kid mind, that innocent mind that forced itself to grow up, burn stages. But he didn't ask. If he did, he wasn't going to get an answer. He never got one.

When the cotton candy was gone, the kid's body started trembling, lightly at first, barely noticeable, but it became more obvious as he started crying softly.

Antonio picked him in his arms, a bit alarmed, holding him close to his chest, and tried to comfort him while he kept crying.

"I miss her," said the kid between sobs. "I miss my mom."

He couldn't understand at all what Lovino was going through. The pain he felt, even if big, couldn't be compared to the pain the kid had surely been feeling for the past year. He had lost a great support, the person who would walk with him to school every morning, who would welcome him with a big smile and a good meal, with promises of spending the afternoon playing, who would embarrass him in High School calling him her little boy, or would hear him out when he fell in love, found a pretty girl, had problems in school, with his friends, with the teachers… Antonio could do that, but never nearly as well as she would. He couldn't take his mother's place, at all.

"I know, Lovi," he murmured, feeling his voice tremble a bit as he kissed the boy's head. "I miss her too."

All he could do was keep his promise. God, he had lost his way to it for a long time. He needed to make a great person out of Lovino, and show him the best of life.

"And I'm sure she misses you…"


End file.
